


Two-Step

by Zeke Black (istia)



Series: Los Hermanos [4]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, POV Ezra Standish, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-23
Updated: 2011-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-15 00:28:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/Zeke%20Black
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ezra's the only one who can find Chris. A <em>Los Hermanos</em> story, where the Seven are brothers and half-brothers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two-Step

Ezra ducked to avoid being hit in the face by a wind-whipped bramble, then cursed as his foot slipped on the slick path. At least the drizzle had petered out just as he drove up. He tugged his coat closer around himself and eyed the clouds billowing overhead with a jaundiced eye. If this venture proved to be a wild-goose chase, he'd....

Rounding another curve on the path's upward spiral, he paused involuntarily as he emerged at last onto the height, breath stolen for a moment at the sheer immensity of the vista surrounding him. With the sky roiling above and the ocean below, it was like being caught between mirrors reflecting twinned wild restlessness that stretched across a vast expanse to the horizon, edges blurring together in the distance so it was impossible to tell where ocean ended and sky began.

His eyes, though, snapped to a chiaroscuro figure standing between sea and sky like a beacon. Tall and slender, dark as the streaks in the clouds, but tipped with brightness like a damned lighthouse, fair hair catching the dull afternoon glow. Unlike a lighthouse, however, he was flesh-and-blood, fragile; vulnerable.

Too damned fragile, all of them.

His gaze sharpened and he froze in place as he realized Chris was standing right on the fucking cliff edge, swaying as the wind buffeted his hair and jerked his black jacket around him like a sail. The blunt toes of his worn cowboy boots were planted a foot apart and not an inch from the lip of the precipice. The very sheer edge of the very high fucking precipice.

Ezra quieted his breathing, though there was no way even heavy panting would be audible over the wind, and stayed still as a mouse studying a cat. Did Chris know how close to the edge he was standing? Was it defiance or just utter obliviousness?

His mouth curled with sardonic acknowledgement: Of course Chris knew. Chris always knew what he was doing.

He'd called the house immediately after talking to his mother. JD had answered, young voice subdued even over the long-distance line. He'd got angry, though, when Ezra had asked for Chris.

"Who is this?"

"Who is this? Who on earth do you think it is? It's Ezra. How many people who sound like me do you know? Now, I'd like to speak to Chris, if you don't mind."

Mother had been livid. Her fury had put him on edge, made him tart himself, still reeling from the idiocy.

But a tremble in JD's voice had riveted his attention. "I don't know who you are, but you're not my brother. I dunno what you want, but--"

"JD." He'd slowed himself down, taken a breath, softened his voice. "JD, it is me. I'm all right. You got a call, then?"

He'd been afraid of being too late, as he'd been with Mother. JD hadn't answered him, shouting instead for Josiah, for Vin, still in that hurt, uncertain voice. Vin had taken the phone, voice cautious but strong.

"Ezra?"

"Yes, it's me. I'm fine; it was all a stupid mistake, an unbelievably moronic chain of circumstances. I'll explain, but first, I'd really like to speak to Chris. Is he there?"

Vin let the worry show in his voice then. "No, he took off. Didn't say nothing, just took his jacket and drove off in the truck."

"Fuck." He'd shoved more quarters into the payphone and slumped against the side of the booth. "Where is he?"

"I dunno. Even Buck and Josiah ain't got no idea. They just said he did this regular like after losing...you know. But he always come back, they said. Sometimes beat up and usually hungover, but he always come back safe."

Vin's words were laced with determined faith in Chris's ability to look after himself. Ezra had never really found hope and faith sufficient to appease his mind himself, but sometimes that was all you had; he knew the pull of the void.

But he knew Chris, too. Just maybe better even than Buck and Josiah: For reasons everybody carefully avoided ever mentioning.

Through the whirl of his thoughts, he'd distantly heard Vin still talking, about Buck's having found the truck abandoned at the bus station; of how Chris'd done that before, too, taken the bus somewhere into the blue unknown.

Unknown...but not goddamned _unknowable_.

He'd promised to call back soon and hung up. He'd been in Portland, fortuitously. Or perhaps not; he couldn't recall ever having had any decent luck at all in that damned city even before this latest fiasco. But at least it'd meant he'd been close. Just under four hours later, thanks to speeding and pre-rush traffic, he'd arrived at an obscure fishing village on the Washington coast. A tiny place, barely known, but with one distinction: Chris and Buck's mother had been born and grew up here.

Ezra rubbed his lip now, destination achieved, watching Chris's lean figure sway in the wind. Chris's body was straight and sturdy there on the edge of destruction, but he was delicate flesh nonetheless, not fucking stone. One errant move and Chris would break his devil-may-care neck on the beach where his mother as a child had gathered the glass balls she'd brought with her to the ranch too far inland for even the faintest tang of salt to reach.

Speak first and risk startling Chris into slipping? Or sneak up behind him and grab him? Was it even possible to sneak up on Chris? Even a Chris directing a thousand-yard stare toward invisible Japan likely still had his preternatural ability to sense danger approaching from behind--if not, apparently, right under his feet.

Except, no, he probably did know exactly where his feet were planted and how much he could get away with. People Chris loved kept dying, but never Chris.

Chris's nightmares, his fears waking and sleeping, never involved his own obliteration.

Ezra took a careful breath and moved slowly off the path onto the damp grass toward Chris, thirty feet away. Cheeks stinging as he faced into the full force of the updraft, Ezra lifted his voice to carry.

"If you slip and fall to a ludicrously inane death after all I've been through this past day, I just want you to know I'll make sure your tombstone says something insulting for all eternity."

Chris froze at his voice. All right, yes, thank fuck for Chris's survival instincts, alive and well no matter what. Ezra drew a ragged breath as he moved swiftly to his prey, bracing himself as the wind swirled around his legs and made his coat balloon like a glider's wing. He dragged it down and held it firmly with one hand. He'd never had any desire to be Mary Fucking Poppins.

When he latched onto the waistband of Chris's black jeans under his billowing jacket, it was as much to anchor himself as Chris. Chris wouldn't let him fall; wouldn't let either of them fall. He still hadn't lost his little boy's faith in his indomitable big brother, even while now knowing just how frangible Chris really was.

Vin wasn't the only one with crazy amounts of earnest, if ridiculous, faith.

He took one look over the edge of the cliff at the narrow beach far below, studded with rocks, logs, and driftwood, and clamped his eyes on Chris, swallowing nausea. Chris was turning to him, careful and slow, moving away from the edge as he propelled Ezra backward. Pinned by Chris's sharp, roaming eyes, he trusted himself to Chris's grip, rescuee turned rescuer; Chris's hands on his arms didn't feel remotely fragile, but he knew the lie in them even without Chris's closed face.

"It was an arrantly idiotic misunderstanding," he said, as soon as he felt the safety of the path under his feet and they halted their conjoined shuffle. "I called the house as soon as I heard."

Chris said nothing and didn't move, except his eyes, which seemed to be studying every part of him; he watched Chris's Adam's apple bob as he swallowed, hard. Then Chris's hard grip on his arms loosened and Chris dragged him close. He grabbed Chris in turn, reveling in the heat as their bodies pressed together and putting a hand on Chris's head as Chris's cold nose pushed against his neck.

"I'm sorry." He rubbed Chris's bent back, sturdy, but trembling ever so slightly like JD's voice. "I'm so fucking sorry."

They didn't say anything else on the trip down, or while Ezra drove them to the waterfront--well, hell, the whole village was waterfront--pub that rented rooms where they'd stayed the previous summer. Only when they were in the room with the door locked, with Chris's eyes still fixed on him across the narrow space, more demanding than the loudest shout, did Ezra stop fussing over his damp leather shoes and spread his hands out to his sides.

"It was a terrible misunderstanding."

Chris tilted his head, eyes hard and reflectionless as marbles boring into him. "The police phoning to tell us you're dead isn't what I'd call a 'misunderstanding'."

"I know, it's stupid and--"

"'Stupid' isn't the word I'd use, either."

"Good Lord, Chris, don't you think I know?" He could hear his accent thickening, always a dangerous tell. He took one breath, then another, slow and deliberate.

When he could trust himself, he went to Chris and slid his fingers around Chris's wrist. He nodded to the bed and tugged gently, then again. Chris let him lead him to the bed, let him pull Chris down beside him. They stretched out, flowing together with the ease of familiarity to lie face-to-face, close enough for Chris's breath to drift across his cheek.

He kissed the pink of Chris's wind-scoured cheeks, wondering if the faint salt taste had come from the sea or something else; but he'd never ask. Chris's thumb stroking the back of his hand was soothing, reassuring.

Chris was quiet, but it was in Chris's demanding way.

"Right, yes." He frowned, angry all over again at the royal cock-up. "It's all Fick Ferguson's fault, which is usually a safe bet whenever Fick is around." He hazarded a wry grin, but sobered at Chris's steely look. "Yes, well, I was in Portland looking into a possible business venture, which involved liaising with Fick, who is a...." He watched Chris's eyebrows lift and cleared his throat. "Well, he's a spineless blockhead, but he has a good many local, um, contacts, mostly due to his large extended family and their penchant for marrying, or inter-marrying, within the...group. So to speak."

Chris was grimacing at him, giving him a _who-the-freaking-fuck cares?_ look.

Fine, right, cut to the chase, to be vulgar. He took a deep breath. "Fick was the jackass who told the police I was in the car that crashed and burned."

"Ahh," Chris growled.

"Uh-hm. I completely agree. Of course, to be fair--though, honestly, Fick never deserves fairness--I had been in the car. He saw me get in, so when it turned up at the bottom of a ravine on the lake road an hour later, burning too hot for anyone to get close enough even to tell how many were inside, Fick assumed I'd been killed along with the driver, who was another, er, contact. Even sleazier than Fick, frankly. I decided I'd been sitting in the dirt long enough for one day and told him to let me off around the corner, then headed back to my hotel, where I had a long bath and a blissfully restful night."

He sighed and rubbed his forehead with his free hand. "Until I got up this morning and ran into Fick, who, I have to say, could play a swooning Victorian maiden without any effort." He sighed the acid out of his voice, and settled farther into the pillow, drawing in the fading ozone scent Chris was still exuding. He stroked his fingertips up Chris's bare forearm and flattened his hand against the warmth, gripping the comfort of tough sinew and soft hair.

"When I got to the police station with my ID, I discovered they'd already contacted my next-of-kin. Utter moronic stupidity. They have two very badly burned bodies in the morgue, and based only on Fick's babblings, decided one must be me. Honestly, it's no wonder civilization is sliding downhill."

"Fick Ferguson."

A chill ran up his back at the menace in Chris's distant voice. He grabbed Chris's hand and twined their fingers together, relieved when Chris's distracted gaze sharpened on him.

"Mother is extremely annoyed with Fick; the police called her yesterday, too. I do believe our dear Fick is going to be experiencing a run of very bad luck in various areas of his life for the next, oh, year at least."

He grinned, keeping his hand on Chris's arm, waiting until the tension finally drained away and Chris nodded.

"I reckon Maude will know how to handle him."

"And the delightful part of it is that Fick will never figure out what's going on. He'll just fuddle his way through one miserable failure after another."

Chris smiled then, amused, lean body relaxing against Ezra, and the gray day suddenly felt absurdly sunny. Lord, he was becoming as sentimental as JD, who at least had youth and an innocent upbringing to excuse him.

Of course, there were significant advantages to his not-so-innocent upbringing.... He grabbed Chris's face and kissed him, then rolled Chris onto his back and leaned over him, sharp and predatory. Chris's hands plucked Ezra's shirt out of his pants and slid up his bare sides, a dance of sensation that made Ezra shiver and his cock perk up.

"I'm alive," he murmured, as he unzipped Chris's jeans and peeled them all the way down and off Chris's long legs.

He ran his tongue up the soft skin of Chris's inner thigh and into the grease of his groin as he gathered Chris's balls in one hand and stroked his thumb across the soft, hairy skin. Licking a stripe up the top of Chris's cock, Ezra hummed as it pulsed against his chin.

"So very, very alive."

He smiled up at Chris as he gathered Chris's thickening cock in one hand. Chris smiled back, slight but so fucking, painfully tender that Ezra's breath caught. Chris's eyes were still shadowed, his gaze intense, as he trailed the backs of his fingers down Ezra's cheek in a long, slow sweep.

 _This time,_ the touch said. _This time, the phone call wasn't true,_ the tremor in his fingers said. _This time, nightmare wasn't reality._

 _Next time_ wasn't said; but it didn't need to be, woven into the air itself between them. Ezra couldn't promise there wouldn't be another time, and he knew Chris would never ask.

Chris's skin tasted like a man who hadn't slept in a day and had walked hard and raged. Ezra absorbed it, the visceral taste of Chris's loss and Chris's fear, as much a part of him as the strength in Chris's hand cupping his head and the throb of the big vein on the underside of Chris's cock. They and the myriad other elements, both the familiar and the still-to-be-learned, made up the complex that was Chris: and they were Ezra's, too, to have and to hold.

He knew Chris better than anyone.

He smiled as he took Chris's cock, slick from his mouth, into his hand and climbed atop him. Chris's legs spread for him, cradling him between strong thighs as Chris's hands settled on his ass, fingers snugging into his cleft like the rhythm of their breathing. They humped against each other, hot and close, and he flew with the mounting sensations, soaring higher with the pound of _life_ in his veins than standing at the edge of a fucking cliff could ever take a man.

He stroked damp hair off Chris's forehead and bent to lick sweat from the dip of Chris's collarbone. Chris's arms tightening around his back was all the warning he got--all he needed--as Chris flipped them, putting Ezra on his back and lifting over him before settling on him, careful and sure and demanding as he established a driving rhythm of thrust and squeeze, holding both their cocks in his hand.

Ezra set his teeth in Chris's tense shoulder and bit down to stifle his yell as the heated slickness of Chris's spurting come against his belly tumbled him into climax.

Sex with Chris was all about silence, where before he'd enjoyed noisy celebration in bed: The secretive quiet of caution in hotels and inns, and of consideration at home. No one around them wanted to know--hell, fought tooth-and-nail to avoid acknowledging--how freakishly perfectly he and Chris fit together. Ezra laughed with the secret thrill of it, fierce and possessive as he clutched Chris's lean weight close and felt the heave of Chris's chest against his own. A drop of sweat fell from Chris's forehead and rolled down Ezra's cheek like a borrowed tear.

Later, sliding into sleep in the darkness with Chris pressed against his back and Chris's quiet, even breathing in his ear the most familiar night-sound he now knew, he just barely avoided blurting out the unforgivable. Surging awake as he clicked his teeth together, he stilled, holding his breath, until Chris's relaxed body reassured him.

Every instinct in him was clamoring to demand Chris promise never again to fling challenge to the fates at the edge of a goddamned cliff. But he couldn't, because that in a nutshell was the essence of Chris: fucked-up, foolhardy, and very possibly more than a little nuts.

Being just as fucked-up and a fool himself, he wanted Chris exactly the way he was. It made the two of them what they were, fit them together like caviar on toast--he was, of course, the caviar--or cowboy boots and Escada jeans. If they were normal, either of them....

If they were normal, in the way most people interpreted "normal," they wouldn't ever have plunged into this perfect and perfectly fucked-up place they shared, this secretive haven in the dark he wouldn't exchange for any other life, or person, ever.

Chris wouldn't ask him to change. Instead, Chris would just go on in the quiet desperation of his everyday life, dreading phone calls that shattered otherwise ordinary days: about the deaths of parents; loss of brothers; destruction of wife, of child.

And Ezra had made significant changes in his life, for Chris's sake and his own, without Chris's needing to ask. He now avoided association with certain individuals he knew to be unstable, where once he'd've sallied forth with reckless confidence he could handle any situation that arose. But he still walked on the shady side of the street and took chances those normal folks never would, because he had to be what his past had made of him. Just as Chris, when the world fucked with him, flung defiance from the crumbling edge as naturally as breathing.

He felt around in the dark until he could gather Chris's hand into his grip, threading his fingers through Chris's lax ones. Chris murmured against his shoulder, stirring enough to stab a bony hipbone into Ezra's ass.

"It was just a completely unpredictable confluence of stupidity," Ezra whispered.

Chris sighed, low and deep with sleep, and pulled Ezra closer, fingers tightening on his before going lax again within his hold.

He almost wished he could make the promise Chris wouldn't ever ask of him. But that would just lead to ruin. He'd be as different if he changed himself that much, tried to contort himself into something safer, as a Chris who never tilted against the windmill of fate would be from the man who lit Ezra up and made the furtive, constrained quiet of their lives together like a sounding brass.

Two fucked-up fools who danced on the edge of destruction: but they danced in step with each other.

He tucked Chris's hand close against his chest and smiled as he fell asleep.


End file.
